The highest scoring Navy F4F pilot was a warrant officer - Machinist Donald Runyon, who originally was an enlisted NAP (Naval Aviation Pilot). He scored eight times in just three sorties during August, 1942. Supporting the invasion of Guadalcanal, on the 7th he shot down two Val dive bombers, and on the 8th a Zero and a Betty bomber. On the 24th, during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, he destroyed three more Vals and a Zero. He later returned to combat as a commissioned officer in 1943, and scored three more kills while flying Hellcats with the Bunker Hill's VF-18.

Dan

Here she is pictured with her eventual successor - the much larger F6F Hellcat (by Hobby Master).